(from "For What It's Worth" [Buffalo Springfield, 1967], a song with an anti-war, anti-Establishment context completely different from Resurrection, but these lines are just too appropriate to ignore)
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
“You see, you can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the same name)
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): I’m still staying away from movie theaters as my 74 years makes me more vulnerable than many others to the spread of the latest COVID variant (yes, I’m vaccinated and boosted, but if 79-year-old-President Biden, with the same safeguards as me, could catch it twice in about 2 weeks I’ll continue to be cautious) so that keeps me in streaming land where I settled on only 1 option for this week for 2 reasons: (1) In addition to Resurrection, which sounded intriguing, the only other streaming possibility was Day Shift (J.J. Perry; Netflix) where Jamie Foxx plays some kind of a contemporary vampire hunter, but it got only 56% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, a 52% average score from Metacritic (plus Dave Franco’s in it which presents other considerations, given his current problems with sexual-harassment-charges) so I watched the better-reviewed-Resurrection; (2) I only attend to at most 2 review-options per week because of other viewing decisions regarding streaming series and occasional offerings on my local PBS station (last week I couldn’t pass up The Third Man [Carol Reed, 1949], one of the very few I’ve awarded 5 stars, as it’s truly a classic which I reviewed when it was given a re-release; also just re-watched All the President’s Men [Alan J. Pakula, 1976], which, unfortunately, is still very timely [and marvelous; never should have lost Oscar’s Best Picture to Rocky {John G. Avildsen, 1976}, great as that triumphant boxing movie is]), with one of my scheduled-movie-availability nights last week devoted instead to streaming a building-to-powerful-play, Sanctuary City (Martyna Majok; directed at Berkeley [CA] Rep by David Mendizábal) about the difficulties faced by a couple of young Latino/Latina DREAMers trying to fit into a society that often doesn’t want them to be here. (I’m not attending live theatre at this point either, but if you’re OK with such keep an eye out for a possible future performance of this play in your area; here's one review if you'd wish to learn more about it.)
So, with all of those things in mind, I saw Resurrection, found it mostly fascinating but maybe a bit unsure of what it wants to be as a story about an obsessively-controlled-woman who becomes totally unnerved when her long-ago-lover shows up, claiming their dead son’s still alive in his belly; you’d better read what I have to say about it before investing your cash (available on various platforms including Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video for $6.99 rental). Also, here are links for the schedule of cable's Turner Classic Movies, presentring a great catalogue of older films with no commercial interruptions, and the JustWatch site with its wide streaming selection: access, rental, or purchase. If you'd want to see what reigned at the domestic (U.S.-Canada) box-office last weekend, go here.
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: We open with Gwen (Angela Wong Carbone) telling her troubles about an uncomfortable relationship to Margaret (Rebecca Hall) in what seems to be a patient-therapist interaction, where Gwen’s advised to tell the guy to shove off. As events unfold, though, we find Gwen’s in her last days as an intern in some company (seems to science- or tech-oriented) in Albany, NY where Margaret’s a competent, organized, self-controlled power-player who spends her off-work-time jogging around the city; keeping a close eye on her almost-18-year-old-daughter, Abbie (Grace Kaufman), who’ll soon be off to college; pursuing an affair with married co-worker, Peter (Michael Esper). Abbie’s tired of Mom’s constant hovering when they’re both home (they’re also both confused when Abbie finds a human tooth in her wallet) so she spends as much time as she can with her friend, Lucy; on one such occasion, though, while Margaret’s in bed with Peter, ignoring her phone, she misses a call from Abbie who’s at the hospital with leg-laceration-injuries after drinking too much, then having a bicycling accident. Things get worse for Margaret as she’s at a boring seminar at work when she happens to see David (Tim Roth), her lover from 22 years ago; scared, she runs out, goes home to check on Abbie. Later, while shopping with Abbie she sees him again, leaves the mall, goes home again which upsets Abbie considerably. Margaret sees David yet again at work; he leaves to go to a park, she follows, yells at him to stay away from her and Abbie.
At first he acts like he doesn’t know who she is but then tells her Benjamin, the baby they had together years ago but died, is “with him,” upsetting her further. Because the police can be no help without some actual threat from David, Margaret changes her locks, buys a pistol, has a horrible dream about a burned baby in the oven. One night after work Gwen comes in hoping for a good recommendation, instead gets a long, powerful monologue from Margaret about how at 18 she was in a remote spot in Canada with her biologist parents, met David who charmed all of them; she soon moved in with him, but he began requesting “kindnesses” from her which became more sadistic. (This compelling scene has echoes of intense revelations about an orgy some years ago by nurse Alma [Bibi Andersson] to patient Elisabet [Liv Ullmann] in the mesmerizing Persona [Ingmar Bergman, 1966] where Gwen, like Elisabet, stays silent through the lengthy, revelatory monologue.)
After giving birth to Benjamin, Margaret realized David was becoming jealous; one day after he sent her away for supplies she came home to find the baby gone, except for 2 fingers, David claiming to have eaten him, Ben still alive inside of him. Margaret finally slipped away, changed her name, but he eventually shows up (Gwen’s put off by all this, leaves). Margaret begins to track David, confronts him in a diner, tells him to leave, but he’ll do it only in return for another “kindness”: her walking barefoot to work instead of driving. He also leaves her a key to his hotel room (clerk says no David Moore is registered there), where she finds Ben’s baby blanket. Margaret then plans to kill David in a park at night, yet he wrestles the gun away; she’s becoming manic by this point, with both Peter and Abbie trying to get her to seek help only for Margaret to accept another demand from David that she hold a yoga pose for hours in a park at night. She goes to work where others see how disheveled she is (hasn’t been there for a week), Abbie goes away from home, Peter tries to help but Margaret just punches him. ⇒David comes to her workplace again; she agrees to come to a hotel room that night which she does after leaving a possible goodbye letter and video for Abbie. David has her feel his stomach where he claims the baby’s moving; instead, she attacks him with a hidden knife which he takes from her, but she’s got another one, wounds him greatly after they’ve stabbed each other. She ties him to the bedframe, slices open his gut, pulls out his intestines, then finds baby Benjamin there alive. In the final scene (some say it’s a dream; the surroundings are certainly lighter, brighter than the rest of the film) she’s in bed with the baby (missing 2 fingers) very happy, Abbie’s in the room too, also very happy as the camera focuses on, dollies in to Margaret’s face which becomes grimly-serious. (One speculation, in addition to others offered in the next section just below, is Margaret did have a baby, by way of Peter, as a means of reducing her anxiety about Abbie leaving, so most of what we see in this film is her hallucinations: also appearing slim even if she’s actually pregnant, without clear clues about David ever being there or being killed.)⇐
So What? The central questions about Resurrection seem to be “What actually happens?,” “What type of film is this?,” and “What am I supposed to gain from watching it?” In regard to “what happens,” you can get a couple of interpretations from the video that’s the second item with this film in Related Links far below, but reasonable conclusions include the following: (sorry, I’m back in Spoiler alert mode again) ⇒(1) Margaret’s never been able to get over the death of her baby so she brought another child into her life after sneaking away from David by just having random sex until getting pregnant, then spent 18 years hovering over Abbie resulting in manifested-trauma when her daughter’s about to leave for college, so David never does reappear, Margaret just hallucinates him with us not knowing for sure what we’re seeing because every scene is staged from her point-of-view thereby allowing us to assume objective-imagery when it may actually be completely subjective from her tortured mind.* (2) David does come back into Margaret’s life but only because he wants to reconnect with her (she apparently was a willing [although manipulated] submissive to his increasing sadism years ago; he would have likely, eagerly sought rekindling that sort of relationship) with all the business about Benjamin’s continuance again just hallucinatory-conjecture by Margaret, David maybe having little actual interaction with her as she slides further into madness; (3) What we see of Margaret killing David, then finding her baby inside of him is literal which moves this film from the realm of psychological horror into some sort of metaphysics in the mode of Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), with the final, seemingly-fantasy scene also literal as reality as we assume we know it now exists little in this culmination of the narrative.⇐ If you willingly didn’t read any of this alert, all I can unobtrusively say is in Resurrection Margaret encounters some maddening experiences for her which can be tension-inducing to watch for us; whether she’s mad in the process is up for discussion, so it’s quite beneficial to watch this film with someone else for later talk about it.
*One of the marvelous—if not at times marvelously-maddening—aspects of cinematic art is how its foundational-pictorial-nature generally gives audiences an assumption that what we’re viewing is a literal depiction of events as illustrated by filmmakers. Unless we see something obviously shown as a dream—as with this presentation by Gregory Peck’s character in Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945; dream imagery by Salvador Dali)—or as some sort of Expressionistic exaggeration, as with the opening (death) scene of Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)—although those initial-directorial-manipulations become clearer in retrospect after watching the entire film—we assume that what we see in each shot is an objective rendition of on-screen-reality, supposed to correspond to physical realities we encounter in our actual existence. However, unless clues on the spot or revealed later show what we’ve watched is how a character mistakenly comprehends his/her distorted-situation (or was immersed in a dream) we can easily confuse mental-projections with photographic “truth,” as might be the case here with much of what we've observed about Margaret and her terrifying travails.
As to what sort of film this is, the common notations that come to mind are “thriller” or “psychological horror,” but there might be something more extreme to explore also. The concept of a “thriller” movie is one in which (generally speaking) dangerous events are building up around a main character creating tension as to what may happen next, how can this person ever escape such constant calamity—a less-physical-version of this is how troubling events are being revealed to such a character so we may not know for sure what to believe just as the character may be “in the dark” about what's happening as well. A good example of the first type of thriller is from Hitchcock again, with Cary Grant as an ad executive mistaken for a spy by people who want to kill him in North by Northwest (1959) while a current example of this second sort of thriller is the streaming series currently on Apple TV+ (If I can ramble on about films on streaming platforms I can note TV shows too, can’t I?), Surface, in which Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s Sophie falls off a boat into the San Francisco Bay; was this attempted suicide or was she pushed? (Her amnesia provides no answers.) If the latter, is her husband (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) the attempted killer? Well, if we’re to understand Resurrection as a thriller then we can certainly see the accumulated levels of tensions piled onto Margaret, we have to wonder what David’s up to with her, we certainly have some explosive-release in the penultimate scene—but then what do we make of how that all resolves or what comes after it?
If this is a psychological horror film then we up the ante on how much we’re supposed to be terrified by what we see on-screen where killings definitely occur, the killer may be a mystery or a known entity, and (often unfortunately) the financial success of such a story may lead to seemingly-endless-sequels (often a horror in themselves). Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) is a classic of this sort, although other notables include The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Toby Hooper, 1974), Friday the 13th (Sean S. Cunningham, 1980), Scream (Wes Craven, 1996), and Saw (James Wan, 2004). As these movies have gotten intentionally more gory I’ve tended to stay away recently, but, based on solid reviews, I was willing to see what might come up in Resurrection given this generic-category is often attached to it; however, there’s more anticipation of violence here than actual homicide—plus we’ve got that ending to contend with—so I don’t think this nomenclature’s accurate for Resurrection.
However, getting back to the ripe-for-interpretation-ending, we could see this as being what David claims it is (not that he cites cinematic categories) which would get us into the demonic-aspects of true horror movies where vampires, werewolves, zombies, demons and other agents of the night run rampant over decent folks or at least metaphysical things happen, as with David’s claim he ingested Benjamin who still lives inside of him, crying out for his long-missing-mother, even though he’s not grown at all over a period of 22 years. If that’s the case, this story might benefit from additional seemingly-impossible-happenings—such as Abbie finding what appears to be David’s tooth in her wallet—but we do get a powerful punch at the end in this direction (and, after all, the title is Resurrection, but maybe we should just accept the “psychological thriller” classification a few sources call this film). Finally, as to what we’re supposed to gain from watching all this, that’s probably up to you as there seems to be no definitive interpretation of what’s been presented, so you might find it mysteriously-fascinating, too difficult to fully comprehend, or just an inventive cluster of scenes that help you forget about inflation, wars around the world, Chinese saber-rattling, and Mar-a-Lago for awhile. If nothing else, that last aspect might make this film more valuable than it seems.
Bottom Line Final Comments: Resurrection was released to a limited number of domestic theaters on July 29, 2022 (extremely limited, just 97 of them where it took in about $150.6 thousand in that first week, then dropped off the Box Office Mojo charts completely for last weekend) so you may have little chance of finding it on a big screen, although it’s easily available for streaming (for sure on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+, both sites for a $6.99 rental [maybe other sites as well; its availability’s a bit confusing to me] plus whatever you might pay to sign up for a platform; I chose Apple TV+ because I could see it in 4K resolution from them, although Amazon Video’s got a 30-day-subscription-free-trial you might want to explore). The CCAL’s with me in encouraging a look at this film, with Rotten Tomatoes providing 81% positive reviews while Metacritic offers a 70% average score (considerably supportive for them as that number’s one of the higher marks they’ve given to anything both they and I have reviewed so far this year). While you might find the overall-tone of Resurrection to be a sort of Rosemary’s Baby-lite, it’s more unsettling than horrifying (well, depending on whether you’ve ever been involved in an abusive relationship), so if you’re willing to flow along with it, then decide for yourself what you’ve seen (as well as whether you liked it or not), I’d recommend you consider watching it if for no other reason than to try to understand how a creep like David can impose himself psychologically on seemingly-steely-Margaret, just as countless other creeps in real life do the same to the women they abuse yet integrate themselves so well into the lives/minds of those women they become nearly impossible to totally push away. (Not a pleasant storyline to view either, but we could all benefit from learning more about the insidious tactics of such abusers in hopes of being able to better offer help to those who are being tormented, just as—ironically—Margaret was able to help Gwen break off her unproductive relationship even as Margaret herself became pulled back into David’s orbit with help only from her homicidal weapons.)
As you might know (or, if you didn’t before, you do now), I finish each review with a Musical Metaphor to offer one last avenue of commentary on the current subject of analysis, but in the case of Resurrection it took me awhile until I settled on “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free,” written in 1963 by jazz musician Billy Taylor after which it became easily associated with the 1960s Civil Rights Movement; I wish to not take anything away from the obvious denotation of this song regarding the need for personal/social freedom so long denied to so many in U.S. society (an injustice still festering decades later with the absurd “replacement theory” arguments made by many Whites trying to preserve an outdated-attitude of segregation long since officially rejected by our still-contentious-legal system), but I can also see how these lyrics (“I wish I knew how / It would feel to be free / I wish I could break / All the chains holding me / I wish I could say / All the things I should say / Say ‘em loud, say ‘em clear For the whole round world to hear”) could also apply to Margaret’s situation as she’s lived for so many years with the internal guilt of what happened to her baby boy, so much so that she’s on the verge of madness when we meet her, held internal-hostage to what she feels she should have done differently back then as a teenage mom when she was living with David.
If you can accept my “metaphorical” reasoning about this fundamental plot situation in Resurrection then I hope you’ll further enjoy this live version by Nina Simone, whose recording of the song (from her 1967 Silk & Soul album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sEP0-8VAow (lyrics included below the video screen if you want to sing along [especially if you can also get into a soulful-interpretation; I know that my wife, also named Nina, will at least appreciate the song as she’s a big fan of Ms. Simone]) is one of the best-known. None of us may ever really know what’s going on in Resurrection—nor does director Semans feel we need to—but at least this song makes clear that any of us needs to shake off whatever horrors may be holding us back. However, whether Margaret was truly able to overcome her “chains” is a matter best left to our extensive post-viewing-discussion.
That’s all for my critical commentary this week, but whether you agree or not I’ll offer you one more opportunity to be in unity with an attitude that would benefit all of us, James Taylor’s "Shower the People" (on his 1976 In the Pocket album), because we should “Shower the people you love with love / Show them the way that you feel / Things are gonna be much better/ If you only will.” We’re now sailing through divisive times; it could be a smoother ride if we’d only help each other a bit more.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: (1) Robert De Niro set to play both main characters in upcoming Wise Guys; (2) Can Sylvester Stallone get part-ownership of the Rocky franchise?.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problem’s been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
Here’s more information about Resurrection:
https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/resurrection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKERIfEsSVI (15:35 interpretation of the film’s content with possible alternative explanations; Spoilers! [ad interrupts at about 4:15])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/resurrection_2022
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/resurrection
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Here’s more information about your “Concise? What’s that?” Two Guys critic, Ken Burke:
If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact, but maybe while there you’ll get a chance to meet Eagles co-founder Glenn Frey, RIP). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker (although, as you know, with bar songs there are plenty about people broken down by various tragic circumstances, with maybe the best of the bunch—calls itself “perfect”—being "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" written by Steve Goodman, sung by David Allen Coe). But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion/lover/
wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the venue) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes/wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can be raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand" (19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never get tired of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this well). But, while I’m at it, I’ll also include another of my top favorites, from the night before at Desert Trip, the Rolling Stones’ "Gimme Shelter" (Wow!), a song “just a shot away” in my memory (along with my memory of their great drummer, Charlie Watts, RIP). To finish this cluster of all-time-great-songs I’d like to have played at my wake (as far away from now as possible) here’s one Dylan didn’t play at Desert Trip but it’s great, much beloved by me and Nina: "Visions of Johanna." However, if the day does come when Nina has to recall these above thoughts (beginning with “If we did talk”) and this music after my demise I might as well make this into an arbitrary-Top 10 of songs that mattered to me by adding The Beatles’ "A Day in the Life,"
because that chaotic-orchestral-finale sounds like what the death experience may be like, and the Beach Boys’ "Fun Fun Fun," because these memories may have gotten morbid so I’d like to sign off with something more upbeat to remember me, the Galveston non-surfer-boy.
However, before I go (whether it’s just until next week or more permanently), let’s round these songs out to an even dozen with 2 more dedicated to Nina, the most wonderful woman ever for me. I’ll start with Dylan’s "Lay, Lady, Lay" (maybe a bit personal, but we had a strong connection right from the start) and finish with the most appropriate tune of all, The Beatles again, "In My Life," because whatever I may encounter in my time on Earth, “I love you more.”
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